I am one of four charter members of the Albemarle Steak Society. We grill every wednesday at midnight. Members rotate grilling by week, and this week happens to be mine. One of the stipulations is that your steak has to be better than last week's. I have to one-up ribeyes with a garlic sage rub that turned out incredibly succulent.

My plan is to grill bourbon marinated steaks over charcoal with hickory chunks. I have read on this board and some other sites that sugar marinated steaks may end up with a bitter taste from the sugar burning. All the bourbon recipes I have read include brown or refined sugar.

I don't want to risk a disappointment, has anyone used a similar recipe? Should I worry about the sugar burning? What cut of meat would you recommend with this recipe? Any other recommendations/advice?

Oh, and hello to everyone on the board, this is my first post. Thanks in advance for the help!

There is a topic called, "Smoked Some Good Ribs", that may be of some help to you. Our friend Chagan has a response to the brown sugar issue that was asked about a rub used for ribs. It seems that his answer may also apply to steaks marinaded with brown sugar. Hope this helps, or perhaps someone else will answer. The Albemarle Steak Society really sounds interesting.

I wouldn’t worry too much about the sugar burning if you’re using it in the marinade. The purpose of marinating meat is to tenderize it and make it more flavorful and juicy. When you use a liquid marinate, it’s usually made out of liquid with salt, sugar and acid. Please don’t confuse sauces with marinades. BBQ sauce and other thick sweet sauces will burn and cause problems. But when you using a liquid solution, the water crosses the cell membrane and drives the flavor into the meat. This process has no effect on the cooked surface. Sugars in rubs and sauces are the ones that burn and cause problems. If you want to use sugar in your rub, then use turbindo sugar. This raw sugar burns at much higher temp than regular sugar.
Good Luck.

Sun Mar 07, 2004 9:46 pm

Guest

Very good info. I didn't know that about turbindo sugar. I just bought the BBQ Bible and Sauces Rubs and Marinades off of Half.com, I can't wait to try some of those recipes out!

Here's a marinade that works well and gives a great flavor. I got chastised on alt.food.barbecue for using in on ribeyes but they were some of the best I've ever had. It's from a book called Cooking Fearlessly. The lime juice will somewhat "cook" the outside of the steak but they still seared up nicely for me. I marinated some thick ribeyes for about 10 hours.

I love the idea of the group you've formed! That's awesome. The only problem is that midnight on a weekday is way past my bedtime! But for steaks that good I may be able to push it. As time goes on you're going to have trouble topping the next week. Once you reach the best, how do you get better? Pick up a cpoy of "sauces rubs and marinades" it will help you for future weeks.

Also I speak for everybody in saying welcome aboard, and I for one expect updates as to what techniques you guys use week after week.

Thank you all for the great tips. I can't wait for wednesday to roll around. I will keep you posted on the latest creations. Yes, it does get hard to improve after a while, what happens is that someone will bomb on their week, so it doesn't necessarily get continually better. The bomber has to suffer the shame and scorn of his bad steaks until he redeems himself on a later week. It's a good system.

It is a great idea. Hopefully we'll here more from Hooohaa2. He mentioned that they have to constantly one-up each other and there's only so far you can go with that. Once you start flying in Kobe beef from Japan what else is left?
I think a fun way to keep it challenging would be to see who can redeem mediocre to poor quality meats too. "I dare you to take this piece of shoe leather and make it taste great."
I wonder how hard it would be to start up something like that.
A great group would of course have members who have preferences all the way from rare to well-done and all points in between. Having members ranging from pros to newbies would also be good.
I wonder if the Home Depot I work at would let me start something like this for "Grill Marketing Purposes"?